


The B is for Badass

by chocolatebirdie



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: For the most part, LGBT ignorance, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), bucky learns about LGBT, it's light mostly bucky's learning ok
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 09:43:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7796959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocolatebirdie/pseuds/chocolatebirdie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Despite what everyone and their mother thought, Bucky has always been a gentleman. He didn't have much time to dwell on the reasons why before he fell and didn't-die and came back. Now it's 2017 and there's a hundred words he doesn't even recognize in the dictionary, and he has some Googling to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The B is for Badass

**Author's Note:**

> my first time contributing to the stucky fandom ahhhh i'm so excited!!!
> 
> like i said in the tags, tw for some light ignorance (homophobia/transphobia) before bucky gets himself edumacated
> 
> the title comes from that one callie torres quote: "i'm bisexual. so what? it's called LGBTQ for a reason. there's a b in there, and it doesn't mean badass. okay, it does, but it also means bi." #queen

His ma always told him he’d be a heartbreaker. She said it like it was out of her control, and his. He wasn’t really sure what made her say it, but he tried following through with it anyway. 

Bucky flirts. A lot. He always has; he won’t deny he loves the fun of it, and the attention, too. (Peggy Carter’s disinterest in him was as disheartening as it was shocking.) But he never really did anything about it. He took a girl dancing, double-dated with Steve, but he never _did_ anything. He was a gentleman, after all. Least, that’s what the girls thought. Hell, that’s what he always thought, too.

He never really considered that he just didn’t want it.

If he had liked a girl enough, he supposes he could have whisked her away and eloped and had one of those babies that only needed to cook for six or seven months. But he didn’t, and just like that his first life got away from him.

When he comes to, when he is conscious and self-controlled for the first time in seventy years, he’s a little busy catching up on life and hiding from, well. Literally everyone.

When he goes _back_ under the ice, he expects to be out of it for a few decades, or several – like Steve. He doesn’t expect to be out within the year, T’Challa welcoming him “back” (he never left, though?) and sending him on a flight home. A flight to Steve.

He and Sam tread on thin ice most days. Bucky still has trouble distinguishing how much of Sam’s dislike is genuine (he thinks all of it) and how much of it is just the principle of his character (Steve claims _that’s_ all of it). They get along best when they’re ragging on Steve, though. Sam’s been around for the last three years – and watched Steve alongside the public for the three before that – and Bucky teams up with him to cover the first twenty-odd years. It’s a good match.

He disappoints Sam a little today though, he’s pretty sure. Sam’s teasing him about Sharon, again, and it’s not a particular favorite topic of Bucky’s. So, he kissed his ex’s niece and then she disappeared. Bit of a dumb story, if you ask him.

He tunes into the news instead. He does his best to keep up with everything, big or small, when he can. It’s the easiest way for him to remind himself of this new time period. Nine-eleven, Osama Bin Laden, Donald Trump versus Hillary Clinton, global warming. He overhears people in coffee shops claiming to be “sick” of these topics but Bucky can’t get enough. Every report grounds him, reminds him that everything’s changed – and in his case it’s pretty much entirely for the worse. It’s not exactly pleasant, but every day he feels sick with the knowledge of the decades he’s missed, he’s assured that he’s still him. He’ll take fucked up, confused 2017 Bucky Barnes over the murderous, dead Winter Soldier any day.

He knows he’s picking up every word the reporter is saying – he’s been too well-trained not to – but he doesn’t dwell on it, doesn’t process any of it consciously until he hears the word, or rather acronym, LGBT.

That’s another thing he’s had to adjust to. Ladies and men, dating within themselves, and half the country barely bats an eye. They kiss and hold hands and chant at these “pride parades” up and down big city streets. It’s fascinating and just plain confusing at the same time. These kids walk around without a care in the world, girls kissing girls and boys kissing boys like it’s completely normal. He’s not so sure about that. (And he thinks these kids would call him “homophobic” for that, which is a term he’s pretty sure they made up while he was not-dead, but nonetheless.) To be completely honest, he’s not entirely sure what LGBT stands for. He knows “gay” is the new term for “queer” and that “lesbian” is for female queers (although they sometimes call themselves gay, too, but men don’t use lesbian? Honestly, he needs a rulebook) but the other two are lost on him. Maybe that’ll be his next self-taught lesson.

“Romanoff,” he says the next day. Everyone else is blissfully gone, somewhere Bucky didn’t care to find out, but he’s almost positive she's only staying behind to babysit him. (He’s also willing to bet Steve isn’t in on this unspoken plan.)

“Barnes,” she replies, clipped and monotonous, distracted as she walks around the room picking up her newly cleaned weapons.

“I have a question. About… modern things.” He hates this, hates feeling unknowledgeable and _old_ , and he doesn’t look at Romanoff while he waits for her answer. The walls are really interesting, anyway.

“I’m waiting for the question.”

He huffs. God, she’s almost as bad as Wilson. Are all of Steve’s friends a bunch of dicks? Is he included in that?

“What, uh, what does L-G-B-T stand for?” He enunciates clearly, spelling the letters out probably slower than necessary, but he doesn’t think he could bear repeating himself. He’s uncomfortable enough.

Romanoff tries to catch his eye, an overly observant look on her face, but the ugly faded mint color of the wall is fucking fascinating, okay?

“It means lesbian gay bisexual transgender. The first three are sexualities, the last one’s gender.” She pauses, probably waiting for a question, but he’s not sure what to ask, yet. There’s just a lot of words in this century.

“Transgender has been defined and re-defined a couple of times, but as far as I know it’s when your assigned sex, what the doctor declares you at birth, doesn’t match the gender you are.” He squints at her then, because what? What does that even mean?

She sighs, as though his ignorance is personally draining. _Listen, lady, I’m ninety-nine, okay?_ “So it’s like this. You and I, we see ourselves as a man and a woman, respectively. Most people would say it’s because you have a dick and I have a vagina, but since you didn’t die and came back it’s changed since then. Some people, just – they’re male, they feel as completely male as you do, and it’s as obvious to them as it is to you. But they were born with a vagina and told that that makes them a girl, and then they had to go around and tell everyone that that’s not actually true.”

Bucky nods a little, but he’s not sure he’s any closer to understanding. There’s just so much to this new era. “And the others?” He asks after a second.

“Well I’m pretty sure they had ‘gay’ even when you and the dinosaurs were around,” she smirks.

“Homosexuals,” he corrects. “Or queers.”

Romanoff frowns minutely, and he considers this; he knows if he wasn’t supposed to notice, he wouldn’t have. “I wouldn’t say that in public.” He nods in understanding.

“And lastly,” she continues, “there’s bisexual. That’s usually defined as when you like men and women, although the more current definition is attraction to two or more genders – ” – wait, more? There’s _more_ than two? Since _when?_ – “ – you know what, I’ll hold off on that. I think you’ve been confused enough for one day.”

And in Romanoff’s increasingly familiar fashion, she breezes out of the room like she and Bucky had never started talking in the first place.

Later that night, he does what he’s pretty sure is called Googling. He types in LGBT and clicks on the first link he sees, an article for Wikipedia. And then he’s reading about the LGBT, or the GLBT, or the LGBTQ, or the LGBTIQ, good _lord_ , could they just pick one? 

There’s links upon links with every sentence and he’s not sure if they expect him to click on all of them but he does, and he reads until his eyes are sore because it’s been over four hours. His brain feels overloaded, but not necessarily in a bad way. So people’s gender may have nothing to do with their private areas and a person may like the same gender or two or even _three_ genders, and it still feels a little weird to him but he’s glad he knows, now. He feels powerful on the knowledge: _ya can’t beat me yet, twenty-first century_.

It’s a few weeks later that the panic begins to set in.

He’s read dozens of what they call “coming-out” stories by now, and most of them involve a kid describing how he (or she, or they) never liked the opposite (other?) gender “like that,” but he/she/they never realized it until they were older. Some of them talk about getting hugs and praise, while others describe the harsh reality of unacceptance from their parents or even disownment. One boy talks about how he hid his own sexuality from himself so much that he had a panic attack the first time he kissed another boy.

Learning about gay people and everyone else in the acronym was one thing. There were a lot of things, like selfies, that were common to this generation that he didn’t understand but knew better than to voice his opposition. But could he, Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, a ninety-nine year old man, really be gay? Did it work like that?

He Googled “gay historical” and, apparently, it did.

Well, fuck.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry steve's not actually in this but my friend and i decided i should split this into two instead of doing a page break, so the stucky will come SOON i promise


End file.
